It must be something about those Italian tanks, but in WWII, one guy managed to take one out with a tommy gun: David C. Waybur - Wikipedia
Watching Kings, David definitely had The Plot on his side.
The tankers in the “Goliaths” had to be either asleep or just plain !@$%& off to have not seen David approach their line. The only units I’ve seen that were ever that sloppy were U.S. National Guard units.
Bottom line: David ever tries that stunt on an American “line” unit (Infantry, Armor, or Cav), and you can scratch one crunchy; they’d probably consider it a professional obligation to remove such a Darwin Award Candidate from the gene pool.
Unless the driver is pissed and does a pivot turn over your hole, it’s absolutely survivable. It was SOP for infantry to dig in no matter what - the tanks may decide to call artillery on your position, and the slightest hole increases your chance of survival tremendously.
Heh. One of the perils of the “Brigade Combined Arms Combat Teams” is having an Infantry Sergeant Major telling a Company of tankers that they need to dig foxholes next to their tanks.
That way, in case we were attacked, we could get down in the foxholes and fight back.
:smack:
No shit. True story.
I have nothing against Infantry; I firmly believe a solid corps of infantry is an absolute requirement in any military force.
But the infantrification of the U.S. Army has (or had, in my time) gone to ridiculous extremes.
Buncha over-the-hill wind dummies, telling tankers how to fight.
Some of those old tanks looked like they had narrow gun ports for firing small arms or just looking out of. Theoretically, you could fire in to them as well.
Do the tankers sleep and eat and go to the bathroom in their tanks? I’m guessing (assuming the major wasn’t an imbecile) an argument could be made that you might want some place to duck and cover if you happened to be caught outside the tank during an attack.
The whole battle sequences in Kings didn’t make sense to me. Why was a line of Soviet-looking tanks squaring off against a trenchline of lightly armed infantry? Why were such high value POWs kept a few hundred meters behind the front line without any guard. Why were they screaming “where is our support” as a squadron of Huey Cobra’s went screaming overhead (apparently not tearing those tanks to shreds). Why didn’t David catch a sabot round in the face?
What a maroon. As if tankers would know how to fight while standing up. 
Seriously, we trained with tanks integrated in the battalion, and if the tanks were at rest, infantry would screen - dug in - for close-support in case of sudden attack. We were glad to have them for their excellent sensors and heavy fire support (and if you were lucky, the dozer blade), and they didn’t have to worry about close-in defense.
I certainly have been in situations where infantry could have closed with tanks and taken them out with man-portable AT weapons, but the terrain really needs to be on your side. (Helps if the enemy does something dumb, but when isn’t that true?)
We could eat and sleep on the tank fairly well. Making the poopy in the tank was an option of last resort only.
Why duck and cover in a hole right next to a tank when you could duck and cover behind the tank? Or even better yet, in the tank? You know, that big, 65+ ton armored vehicle? In a tactical environment, we were typically no less than 50% security per vehicle, which meant we always had someone on the .50 and one of 7.62mm MGs.
And that was a Sergeant Major, who, it was widely believed, was a few clicks short of proper windage. If you should ever mistake a Sergeant Major for a Major Major (or vice-cersa), they will assuredly make you aware of the difference.
Being a civilian, they will probably do it politely.
ETA: and the good thing about manning the .50 at the TC’s station is that he has instant access to all the gunner’s control’s…
All valid questions.
Which is why people with BAs writing TV scripts depicting the military really need to consult someone like Dale Dye.
No less an authority than Guderian noted the necessity of secondary armament. Units of Ferdinand-type tank destroyers broke through the Soviet lines at Kursk, but couldn’t take out infantry positions in sufficient numbers nor in the end defend themselves against determined infantry attacks, due to their lack of machine guns. Oops.
And infantry are also known as “mud bugs” because…why, exactly? 
Exactly. Surprise is a mental state, not a fact of reality, and a smart, determined enemy infantry unit can still close with and destroy tanks. Modern Western designs mitigate against catastrophic kills, but they aren’t unkown. A mobility kill can leave a crew vulnerable, especially if a vehicle fire forces them to dismount in the middle of a firefight, in which case we were at best very poorly trained and equipped infantry.
More like naked squalling infants torn from our Mother’s warm, metal bosom and thrust unexpectedly into a harsh world of zinging bullets, asploding mortars, and vile, nasty Bad Guys trying to hurt us.
In the first action between German and English tanks in WWI, the English guys machine gunned the Germans leaving their disabled tank. This seems strange. I can understand my Father shooting at the Japanese guy who bailed out after trying to kill him, but tank guys shooting at running tank guys seems like aircraft shooting at parachutists, or ships machine gunning survivors.
I guess it depends upon how much you dislike the other guy…
Dont know about the tank v infantry thing , but the pow’s could have been in a collection point, before being shipped back to the stalag, and if the front line was fluid they may not have been originally close to the frontline.
As for the helo support , Im not sure that any other country besides the US has on call air support down at the platoon level. I have not seen the episode so Im guessing, but historically there have probably been times when no fast movers or rotary was available due to tasking issues.
Declan
War is Hell, ain’t it?
Indeed, but why the professional courtesy of not shooting parachutists or sinking ship survivors? They are trained personnel whose death would set the enemy back while he trained new pilots and sailors.
I honestly couldn’t tell you.
Seamen in the water, and pilots bailing out of disabled aircraft aren’t retreating; they are “out of the fight” entirely. But even tank crews have personal weapons (the 1911 ACP in my time) and retreating isn’t “out of the fight.” Not really.
I suspect that there are two aspects to this. First, as noted, an airman in a parachute is not going to be shooting down any aircraft, (unless he bailed out carrying a Stinger–not an option until very recently, and still pretty unrealistic), and a seaman floating above the wrecked hulk of his ship is also not an imminent threat, while a tanker carrying a pistol, (or picking up a weapon from the ground), is still very much in the fight.
Second, after three and a half years of constant slaughter, mud, and gas, the ground troops of WWI had long since thrown away any vestiges of chivalry that they perceived as a potentially lethal burden.
As far as shooting at bailed out personnel, I suspect the way to think about it is this:
If you’re a rifleman sitting in your muddy trench watching a dogfight above you and one pilot jumps out of his burning airplane you might show some respect and let the poor bastard land in peace. But if the airplane has been strafing you with impunity for the last hour (killing three of your buddies) because you have no anti-aircraft weapons, I suspect you might be eager to get a little revenge if the tables are turned because the pilot has to bail out within rifle shot of you.
I suspect that often bailed-out tankers might be seen as more in the second category than the first (and I suspect that tank crews probably didn’t target bailed-out enemy crews nearly as much as infantry would).
I read an article in Smithsonian magazine a while back by an American WWII fighter pilot that discusses standing orders to deal with an enemy pilot who parachutes out of his plane. If he’s going to land in territory controlled by your side, leave him alone. If he’s going to land in territory controlled by his side, or in the middle, kill him if possible. The thought was that if he’s going to land on your side, he’ll most likely be captured. If he lands on his side though, he’s a valuable trained asset of the enemy who will probably be flying again in a few days, so you should eliminate him.
Maybe this should be a new thread, but… what is current U.S. or NATO doctrine on shooting either
a) bailed-out aviators?
b) tankers afoot after their tank is disabled/destroyed?
c) sailors in the water after their ship sinks?
Is it completely discretionary for whoever has them in their sights? Must you make an effort to capture them, if you can do so without undue risk?
Good point, thanks.